Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus such as a Multi-Functional Peripheral (MFP) and a technique related thereto.
Background Art
There are techniques for managing the usage of each image forming apparatus by users, without using any server, in an image forming system that includes multiple image forming apparatuses.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2013-56515 discloses a technique in which in a cooperative system that includes multiple image forming apparatuses having a master-slave relationship, a master image forming apparatus collectively manages the usage of each image forming apparatus by each user. More specifically, the master image forming apparatus stores amount-of-use information regarding the amount of use of each image forming apparatus by each user (information regarding the amount of use of the image forming apparatus). When used by a user, a slave image forming apparatus acquires amount-of-use information about this user from the master image forming apparatus, and in response to execution of a job, returns the amount-of-use information to the master image forming apparatus.
However, in the image forming system without a server, the convenience of users may decrease if the amount-of-use information about all users is stored in only a single specific image forming apparatus (e.g., a mater image forming apparatus or an image forming apparatus at the top level in a hierarchical structure).
More specifically, in the case where the amount-of-use information about all users is stored in only a specific image forming apparatus, other image forming apparatuses, when used by login users, always perform processing for acquiring amount-of-use information about the login users from the specific image forming apparatus. Thus, for example if this image forming system is used by an extremely large number of users (e.g., ten thousand users or more), access concentration from a large number of image forming apparatuses occurs in the specific image forming apparatus. As a result, a relatively long time is required to acquire the amount-of-use information from the specific image forming apparatus due to the image forming apparatuses having lower throughput than servers, and the convenience of users decreases.
In order to avoid this problem, it is preferable in the image forming system used by a large number of users that each image forming apparatus stores the amount-of-use information about all users. This eliminates the need for each image forming apparatus to acquire the amount-of-use information from a specific image forming apparatus, and accordingly avoids a decrease in the convenience of users due to access concentration from each image forming apparatus occurring in the specific image forming apparatus.
However, as will be described below, there are circumstances that make it difficult to store the amount-of-use information about all users in each image forming apparatus.
More specifically, as the throughput speeds of the image forming apparatuses increase, there is demand for higher-speed access processing when accessing the amount-of-use information that is updated in every execution of a job. The amount-of-use information is thus preferably stored in high speed storages (e.g., flash memories) rather than in hard disk drives (HDDs) of the image forming apparatuses, the high speed storages being capable of higher-speed access processing than the HDDs. However, each image forming apparatus needs to be provided with a relatively large-capacity high speed storage in order to store the amount-of-use information about all users. This results in a considerable increase in cost.
Thus, although it is preferable in consideration of the convenience of users that each image forming apparatus stores the amount-of-use information about all users, this causes a considerable increase in cost in the image forming system used by an extremely large number of users.